


Don't threaten me with a good time

by TheDreamingSpires



Series: One Stop Shop (Stucky AU) [2]
Category: Captain America (Movies), Captain America - All Media Types, Marvel Cinematic Universe, The Avengers (Marvel Movies), The Avengers (Marvel) - All Media Types
Genre: Alternate Universe - Coffee Shops & Cafés, Alternate Universe - Modern Setting, Alternate Universe - No Powers, Alternate Universe - Shop, Bucky Barnes Has Issues, Carol is a BAMF, Multi, NFL fan Carol, NFL fan Steve, not much Bucky in this, peter is a cutie, sorry everyone
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-04-23
Updated: 2016-04-23
Packaged: 2018-06-04 02:02:52
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,958
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/6636646
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/TheDreamingSpires/pseuds/TheDreamingSpires
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Steve always thought that asking someone was on a date was the hard bit.<br/>Turns out keeping them there might actually be more of a struggle.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Don't threaten me with a good time

**Author's Note:**

> I finally got around to writing a sequel! Sorry I'm a bit rubbish in terms of updating - I will work on it, I promise!

Steve was pretty sure he had been staring at the ‘specials’ chalkboard for longer than was typically socially acceptable. He flicked his eyes across to Bucky to see if his suspicions were correct, only to find Bucky staring resolutely at the pastries, similarly entranced. If Carol could see him now, he was pretty sure she’d be ashamed. She’d probably use it as an excuse to attack everyone and anyone who had ever had the misfortune of hailing from New York, as obviously Bostonians were a classier act. Then she’d probably attack the Jets.

The sad thing was, he’d let her. Even in his head, Carol was always right, and wasn’t that pathetic.

Steve took another cursory glance away from the unappealing offer of marshmallow flavoured coffee, only to find Bucky had also risked a glance at him. They both flushed, smiling a little awkwardly as they finally reached the front of the queue. The journey to the café had been less cringe-worthy than this, hadn’t it? Steve was pretty sure their conversation had been companionable, maybe even a little flirty. The current silence was making him doubt himself. Maybe Bucky hadn’t had an interest in the goings on at Stark Stores?

For his own sake, Steve hoped not. That was basically all they’d talked about. If Bucky had just been being polite, then Steve had a snowball’s chance in hell of seeing him once this date was over.

Assuming it even was a date. It was Tony who had called it that, and no one who was both sober and sane trusted Tony.

Oh shit, Steve might have become someone’s worst ever date. He’d been banking on Tinder being the source of everyone’s worst dates nowadays – that was one of the many reasons he hadn’t started using it. Who knew they could still come from innocently asking out someone you thought was hot?

“So, what can I get for you?” a pretty red-headed barista broke Steve from his daze, smiling wanly at him before clocking Bucky, and producing a predatory grin. Steve got where she was coming from – Bucky had mentioned on their walk over that he was a regular here, and if Steve was a barista working for minimum wage who saw Bucky every day, it would certainly be a highlight for him too.

“Skinny cappuccino to go,” Bucky began, peering back at the pastries as though he hadn’t already looked into their souls to avoid making eye contact with Steve. “And a flapjack.”

“On a cheat day, are we?” the redhead joked, turning to Steve. “And you?”

“Uhh,” Steve peered back at the specials board, hoping that Bucky wasn’t judging him the way he had judged Bucky about the pastries. “Latte and a blueberry muffin, please.” He looked at the redhead’s apron for a nametag, and came up empty.

“You got it. Can I have name for the cup?” Steve turned to Bucky, assuming he would go first, only for the redhead to laugh, not unkindly. “I know James’ name, don’t worry. He lurks here a lot. It’s just yours I need.”

“Oh, Steve.”

“Well then, Oh Steve, if you two go wait at the other end of the counter, your drinks should be ready in a moment.”

Steve drifted after Bucky to the end of the counter in a slight daze. That was, if his name even was Bucky. Who the hell was James? Did Bucky make a habit of giving out fake names to overly-friendly sales clerks? Was Steve being real-life Catfished? Was Ashton Kutcher about to leap out from behind the improbably old-looking coffee bar and shout “punk’d”?

Just as Steve started to panic, Bucky excused himself to the bathroom. The second he was out of sight, Steve whipped out his phone and called Carol.

“Steve! How’s it going?” Carol asked breathlessly, voice slightly drowned out by someone shouting in the background. She sighed, and carried on speaking, “Peter wants to know if he’s really weird?”

“We haven’t spoken since we arrived, and I think he gave me a fake name.”

Steve practically heard the mama-bear genes kicking in. “Seriously? What a dick. You want out?” There was more shouting in the background, and Steve heard Carol announce what he’d just told her to whoever she was with. From the distinct lack of tannoy, Steve was guessing break-room. The clamour seemed to get more heated, which Carol translated as, “where are you?”

“The Helicarrier?”

“That hipster joint with the wood and the penny farthings?”

Steve peered around himself, and sure enough noticed one of the old-fashioned bicycles on the wall, suspended at an unlikely angle with the bigger wheel directly behind the redheaded barista and the smaller wheel up near the beamed ceiling. “That would be the place.”

“Hang tight, Peter and I will be with you in ten minutes.” Carol hung up, but not before he heard Peter bitching about being seen at The Helicarrier ruining his street-cred.

Steve continued to wait by the end of the counter, anxiously playing Little Alchemy on his phone and waiting for Bucky to return, or the drinks to come. After a couple of minutes, a male barista sauntered to his end of the counter, drink in hand.

“Latte for Steve?” he asked in a mildly foreign accent, which Steve placed as Eastern European from the Polish families he’d grown up with on the Lower East Side.

“That’s me. What do I owe you?”

The guy smiled sadly, running a hand through his salt and pepper hair. “On the house, my friend. I’m afraid that James has had to go somewhere. He’s very sorry to –.”

He was cut off by the return of the redhead, who appeared behind his left shoulder and shoved him unceremoniously towards the till. “What Pietro means to say is that the coffee is free because our friend is a малышка who runs away when he gets scared and always forgets to put the toilet seat down when he’s finished.”

Thankfully, Pietro looked just as confused by that as Steve felt. He was about to open his mouth to ask the relevance of this, when Carol burst through the doors, Peter in tow.

“Steve? Where is he? You want me to beat him up?” Carol was in full combat mode, staring down every customer in the café without a moment’s hesitation. Steve got like that too, sometimes. When you were paid to be kind to customers all day, every day, it was pretty easy to be rude to people once they weren’t your problem anymore.

“I’m going to film it and put in on YouTube,” added Peter sagely, staying behind Carol despite being at least 5 inches taller and 50 pounds heavier than her. “Then I’ll kick him when he’s down, because I refuse to be ashamed of who I am.”

Carol gave Peter a look similar to that she was giving the other patrons of The Helicarrier. “Peter, that’s for sexualities and you know it. Steve, seriously, where is he?”

“Bucky’s gone. Something came up.” Steve grabbed his coffee from the bar, and made to move towards Carol.

“He ditched you?” Carol asked, looking put-out that she’d missed the chance to punch out a possible hipster who had wronged Steve. “Asshole.”

“Bucky is, indeed, an asshole,” the redhead from behind the bar spoke up again, seemingly past her shock over the arrival of a blonde bombshell and a comic-relief assistant in her café. Pietro still looked stunned, but Steve couldn’t blame him. The melon incident was still fresh in his mind. “However, he is an asshole who is going through a tough time at the moment, and in reality has a heart of gold, if you give him the chance to show it.” She grabbed a napkin from a pile on the counter, and scribbled a number down on it. “This is his number. Please, give him a call. I know he’d love another shot – he wouldn’t have brought you here otherwise.”

Steve opened his mouth a few times like a particularly unintelligent fish, before thankfully Carol spoke for him. “Why the hell should Steve call him? What kind of douche gives out a fake name then dumps someone?”

“Fake name?” the redhead looked honestly confused.

“His name is James,” Pietro announced, apparently understanding better than anyone else. “But everyone calls him Bucky.” He took a sip from the take-away cup of water sitting next to the till with ‘Pietro - touch and die, кучки’ written on it. “Except Natasha,” he amended, indicating the redhead, “who insists on calling him James.”

Carol narrowed her eyes at Natasha, who raised her eyebrows in return. “I still don’t see why you think Steve should do anything for this guy.”

“Because, if he didn’t like James he wouldn’t have come here.”

And that was the clincher, wasn’t it. Steve _did_ like Bucky, or at least had liked the bits of Bucky he’d managed to meet at the store and on the short walk over here. How many hot people took an honest interest in grocery store sales clerks? How many people even noticed their grocery store sales clerk, period, let alone helped them out of a jam?

“I’m willing to give it a shot,” Steve said, feeling bad for assuming the worst about Bucky on the name thing, especially if Bucky was having a tough week.

“Brilliant!” Natasha trilled, passing him the napkin. “You won’t regret it.”

“No,” replied Carol slowly, “but Bucky might. Steve, I’m coming with you. I put you up to this shitstorm of a date, so I have to suffer the consequences with you. No hipster asshole gets to screw my friend over twice.”

Steve nodded, completely unfazed by the suggestion. He’d sat in on dates for her, when she’d been a bit worried about the dodgy factor. The last time, she’d been right. Steve had had to pretend to be her brother and on the run from the police to get her away from Rumlow. That’s just what friends did.

Natasha didn’t look so impressed. “Fine, then I will come too.” She whipped out her phone, seemingly from nowhere, and started typing rapidly. “How’s Sunday?”

Pietro and Peter were looking between the two women as though their conversation was a tennis match, eyes as wide as saucers. Steve was pretty shocked too, trying to work out how he’d ended up in the crosswire of two of the most formidable women he’d ever met. All he needed now was his mom to shuffle through the doors with his college girlfriend Peggy at her side, and he’d be set for the match of a lifetime.

“No can do, the Patriots are playing.”

Natasha quirked an eyebrow. “You watch football?”

“She _lives_ football,” added Peter helpfully, nodding to himself.

“When does the game start?”

“1pm kick-off,” replied Carol warily.

“Great.” Natasha scrabbled for another napkin, then wrote down an address on it. “Be here for 12:30ish, and we can order pizza and get settled before the game. Bring as many friends as you want – it’ll be nice to have someone to watch with who doesn’t keep needing the rules explained.”

With that, she turned and breezed through the door that seemed to lead back into the kitchen of the café, leaving Pietro standing open-mouthed by the till. Halfway through their exchange, a girl had appeared to deal with orders, and after a moment’s hesitation she turned to them.

“If you don’t want anything else to eat or drink, please leave. You’re causing a blockage.” Her voice was pleasant but held an undertone of steel, prompting Steve to take Carol and Peter by the arms and drag them from the café, face on fire as he realised just what he’d gotten himself into.

**Author's Note:**

> So, I've kind of set myself up for a series here. I have no idea how well I'll keep up, but I'll aim to be quicker off the mark with Part 3 than I was with Part 2.
> 
> As always, hit me up with any prompts on [Tumblr](http://all-i-need-is-tea.tumblr.com/) if you have anything you want to see me (try to) write!
> 
> A note on the translations:  
> Малышка – Russian, little girl  
> кучки – Bulgarian, bitches  
> The Russian comes from a friend who does Russian A-level, so I hope it is right! The Bulgarian comes from a dictionary - again, if this is wrong, please let me know!
> 
> I am beta-less, so if anyone wants to volunteer, hit me up on Tumblr or on here.
> 
> I hope you enjoyed this Part 2, see you in Part 3...


End file.
